


Memories

by Eoilock



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 05:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7495182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eoilock/pseuds/Eoilock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly based around my cross Kate and her memories of the past, there will be other plot in there but this is mostly a preface to Kate and what makes her tick more than anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before the destruction

The bustling town of NLA just oozed life. Many people never left the city, only if they had to, even if they were a BLADE due to the dangers of Mira. A greenish blue skell left the city, headed towards Headwater cliff. Kate, a seasoned veteran and woman in her prime, frequently visited the location on her days off. She came to see her sister Laura’s grave when she could, to help her own psyche that was still coping with the loss of basically everything she had on Earth. When she reached the falls she exited he skell and left a bouquet of flowers by the grave, and brushing off some feathers and fauna that crept onto the grave.

“Hey sis, I brought some lilies, I know they were your favorite.” Kate sat down by the water and looked up to the largest moon of Mira, the steady crash of the falls hitting her ears as the smell of the large growth of berries nearby filled her nose. “Sorry I havn’t been around as much, work has gotten a bit hectic recently. To keep the peace, that the job of a mediator. And hey, keeping busy with works helps me keep of mind of, well, everything.” Her head fell and a frown came upon her face.

“Hello Kate, what brings you here?” Hope’s voice chimed up from behind Kate, startling her and causing her to nearly fall over the ledge as she composed herself.

“Oh, hey, sorry about that. I was just ya know, talking to Laura. I know it’s stupid, but even if her memories are still in the core, what if something happened to it? What if her memories aren’t there anymore, or her DNA sequence got lost, or something else? This just gives me closure, in case she doesn’t come back, ya know?” Hope sat down next to her.

“I know.” They sat in silence, admiring the scenery of Mira that never seemed to get old. “Would you mind telling me about your life back on earth? I’d like to know a bit more about you.”

A blush grew on Kate’s face. “Sure, but where to start?” She sat there in silence for a bit, until she came to a decision. “Well, back when Laura, Mike, and I were kids, we were practically joined at the hip. Whenever something happened to one of us, we would help each other no matter what. I was especially bad, constantly picking fights with Mike’s bullies. I would always get detention for it, and Laura frequently came with me despite being in the clear. She was always there for me, and a source of comfort. When we graduated, we all went into the military. Laura went into the Marines, and I followed her down that path when I graduated two years later. Mike however, he decided to go into the Navy. He was kind of a prodigy, and managed to get into the Seals in 2052 when he was 26. Unfortunately, he was killed on his first deployment as a seal, they got ambushed in thick fog” Kate started to wipe tears from her eyes, the pain of loosing her brother starting to come back.

Hope wrapped her in a hug. “I’m sorry. You can stop if you want, you don’t need to bring back any of the painful memories.”

“No, I want to. I want you to know more about me so someone else knows. Besides, bottling up your feelings isn’t healthy, right?” Kate looked over to Hope, seeing the worry in her mismatched eyes. “If I need to I’ll stop, I promise. I just want someone other than Tiki to know about my past.”

“Alright.” Hope got herself a bit more comfortable, than looked over towards Kate.

“Laura was an amazing woman. In only 5 years she managed to become a commanding officer, and I served under her. 8 months before we left earth, she became part of Project Exodus. I became the head of our squadron after that. It took only two months for things to go south.”

_A single bulb hanging from the celling lit the damp room, and the only entry way was a barred steel door on her right. Her 6 comrades were on her left, all of them as well as her self bound on the wrists, above the knee, and ankles by ropes tied incredibly tight. Three tall, scruffy men stood in front of them. Two of them were holding knifes, while the third one was standing by the door. The man by the door was bald and incredibly muscular, and had bags hanging under his eyes. The shorter of the men with a knife had a disheveled look, his hair all messed up and the face of a lunatic on his face, and he was covered head to toe in tattoos. The taller man with a knife just stood there menacingly, but Kate couldn’t make out many of his features due to the lighting and his position._

_“Now we have a simple deal for you. You give us intel, and we may just spare your lives. Now, which one of you is the commanding officer?” The smaller man crouched down to look at them at eye level. “Nobody? Well if you don’t say anything than we’ll just have to kill all of you.”_

_“I am.” In a shaky voice, Noah spoke up._

_“Well then,” The smaller man took Noah and brought him over to the middle of the room, and had him face the rest of them. He took the knife and quickly slashed it along the center of Noah’s neck, like a hot knife through butter. A small choke came from his now exposed esophagus. Blood started gushing ad flowing from the wound, and than the man let go of the body, letting it flop forward onto the concrete floor. The sight was horrifying, while Kate had seen death before as she was a Marine, never had she seen it up close, seeing the desperation and fear in Noah’s eyes, the odd and sickening glee of the murderer, and the fresh red liquid still flowing from the wound of the now lifeless corpse. “I knew he was lying. How sweet, trying to save his friends from death. But that’s not how we do things here. You lie, you die. You lash out, you die. We just feel like it, you die. Now. Which one of you really is the commanding officer?” The glee in his voice never left. No response was uttered from her comrades or her self. “So none of you are speaking up? All right than. I’ll just have to go down the line till you crack. The man, true to his word, started at the farthest left, and started slashing their throat as he went down. As he kept getting closer and closer to her, more tears streamed from her face as the sounds of ripping of flesh and muscles and the splatter of blood hitting the floor. She wanted to look away, but nothing she told her body to do would actually happen. The shock and fear paralyzed her, and the blood quickly started to reach her legs. Just before the man got to Jenya, her comrade who was right next to her, the door slammed open._

_“Drop your weapons! Hands above your head!” Another group of Marines forced themselves into the small room, most likely from tracking their comm systems. The leader looked over to Kate and Jenya, and said something. Kate couldn’t make out what simply sounded like incoherent babbling to her. She was getting light headed as the shock took over and the adrenalin subsided, and she was near passing out. Another man picked her and Jenya up, and took them out of the hovel. Everything went black._

Tears were streaming from Kate’s eyes as she hunched over, her hands holding her head. Even though it had been almost 3 years at this point, the pain made it feel like it was yesterday. The eyes of her comrades as they went from full of fear to dull and lifeless never left her mind. Even with all the therapy and medication she had for those six months before the destruction of earth, they just wouldn’t go away. Hope embraced Kate and said something, but Kate couldn’t hear exactly what that was. She just sat there, crying into Hope’s shoulder. They sat in near silence for what felt like forever while Hope stroked Kate’s short hair and shushed her to comfort her. 

The beeping of Hope’s comm system finally broke the two out of their trance. Hope pulled it out and looked down, than frowned. “I’m sorry Kate, but Vandam needs me. I have the day off tomorrow if you want to talk more about it.”

“Yeah. Well, you go ahead. I’m gonna stay here for a bit, meet here at noon tomorrow?” 

“Sure. I’ll see you then.” Hope hopped into her skell and drove off towards NLA. 

Kate stared off into the sky for a while, still wiping the remnants of tears from her eyes.


	2. After the crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second half of my little backstory for Kate.

Kate was roused from her slumber by the smell and sizzling of bacon on the skillet. She groggily got up, brushed her teeth, and put on her typical outfit of a cammo tank top, beige shorts, and green and black boots. She went over to the bar in the kitchen and plopped down on one of the stools.

“Morning Kate. Sorry for waking you, I was kind of hoping to surprise you and Mia. I saw you were down in the dumps yesterday so I figured I’d make bacon and waffles.” Lin didn’t even look away from the stove. Kate gave some incoherent mumbling and pointed to the coffee maker. “It’s almost done. Grab yourself a mug while it finishes, I’ll grab your creamer.” Kate got up and went over to the cabnet, mulling over her choices. She decided on her mug, a simple black mug with the mediators symbol on it when she heard the buzz of the machine finishing. She poured her mug almost to the brim, with just enough room for some creamer. Lin slid the creamer over to her as well as a butter knife to stir it in. 

“Where’s Elma?” Kate finally spoke after taking a few sips of her coffee

“Irina and Gwin needed some help on a mission, and took Tatsu with them cause he wanted to go see his family, so just us three for now.” Lin finished up cooking the last of the bacon and started in the waffle batter. “Hey could you grab me two eggs and the milk from the fridge? I forgot to grab them earlier.”

“Yeah, sure.” She walked over to the fridge not paying attention and nearly ran over Mia. “Oh, morning. Sorry, didn’t see you coming.”

“Nah it’s fine. I didn’t announce myself anyway.” Mia just kind of waved it off than took a big wiff as Kate walked past her to the fridge. “That just smells amazing Lin. So obviously bacon is in there, but pancakes or waffles?” Mia’s mouth was nearly watering. Kate gave Lin what she asked for and went back to sitting. Her mug gripped in her hands, she got lost in thought as Lin finished up making breakfast. Lin setting a plate in front of her interrupted her trance.

“Dig in! Sorry it doesn’t look the best, the iron didn’t want to let them out. It says non stick but I swear sometimes it’s a lie.” During her lapse Mia had put butter and syrup onto the bar and was already shoveling the waffle into her mouth. 

Mia looked up from her breakfast “So Kate, I was wondering if you wanted to go shopping with me today? I saw this really cute pair of boots the other day, you should come try them!” Mia looked expectantly at Kate.

“Sorry, I already have plans. I don’t know when I’ll be done, but I might join you when I am.” 

“Alright, but don’t keep your girlfriend out too long.” Mia gave her a little wink, and than promptly had a book thrown at her face.

“And you’ll shut it. She’s not my girlfriend.” Kate was giving Mia a death stare.

They finished up their breakfast and cleaned up while chatting idly. When they finished, Kate looked up at the time, noticing it was just about 11:00. She said bye to her team members, and hoped into her skell flying off towards Headwater cliff. 

“Hey.” Kate was siting by the ledge while sharpening her knife. “How was the mission yesterday?”

“It went well, not all that interesting compared to ones you’ve brought me on.” Hope took a seat next to Kate and adjusted her jacket a bit.

“So.” Kate shuffled a bit and put the rock she was sharpening her knife with down, but kept the knife in her right hand. “Want me to get back to the story of my past?”

“If you want to, it’s ok if you don’t.” Hope put a reassuring hand on Kate’s shoulder.

“Ok. Well, I may as well start with my family. Other than my siblings, I had a husband and daughter. My husband, Aoi, was an engineer who worked on project exodus. Before it became a thing though, he worked on the skeleton program for many years. We started dating not long after I met him in New York during a convention, He was in college and I was visiting family while on break during military school. We started talking about cosplay because we really liked each others, then we ended up talking over lunch, then we hung out during the rest of the convention, and we talked all the time when we could. We started dating long distance, than we shared an apartment after we both graduated. He was amazing. He was funny, good hearted, a man who loved unconditionally. We married after 6 years of dating, when I was 27 and he was 26. When we got engaged we talked about children. We both wanted some, but I really didn’t want to give birth. We opted on adopting, and we did so a month after we married. We adopted a young girl, Maria. She was 7 when we adopted her, and she was incredibly energetic. She was shy around others and us at first, but she became what we really knew as her after only two months. She was our little ray of light, even after we told her about project exodus after I came back from my deployment during which Aoi started working on it. She believed in other people so much. Especially in her father and his co-workers to build an amazing ark for space, and in her aunt and I to protect humanity well. It was amazing. She had the best heart of any person I had ever seen, which is until I met you.” Kate pulled a small locket out of her pocket, which held a picture of Aoi and Maria. “Being military, I wasn’t home as much as I would have liked. But regardless, we were family. When I was deployed, I was always talking with them as much as I could over video chat. Aoi took great care of her, keeping our little light safe and well taught. She was a wonderful student, and I expected amazing things for her.”

“They sound wonderful. I wish I could have met them.” Hope looked down at the locket Kate was holding “You know, even for an adoptive daughter, I see a lot of you in Maria. Especially the eyes, eyes of someone who want to help whomever they can.”

“Yea. You could still see her. After the incident six months before earth was destroyed, the higher up of project exodus wanted to bring Aoi and I on as crewmembers. Aoi insisted I accept as soon as we got the letters three months before. He talked with them, and refused to unless they let Maria onto the ship. Vandam insisted that they should, as he knew Aoi personally, and he was an amazing help to the project, even being one of the core members to build mims. They conceded, and let Maria onto the whale. The week before the earth was destroyed, I was put into my mim, and Maria was put into the core. The were still working on Aoi’s mim, due to how much later than me he agreed. The day he was supposed to be brought to the core and uploaded into his mim, earth was attacked. He didn’t make it on. Laura did however, and she was there to help comfort me. As you already know, she can’t anymore.” Kate looked down again.

Hope looked over to Laura’s grave. “So what happened to her?”

“Well, it was during the battle defending the whale over Mira.”

_A siren started blaring across the ship. Everyone looked up to them, simply responding to where the sound was coming from. A voice came from the speakers._

_“This is your captain Kentaro Nagi. The xenoforms that battled above earth and stopped our brothers and sisters from living have caught up to us, and appear again to fight us. All defense personnel board your skells and prepare for combat, and all non-combatants take defensive positions in your designated location. We will not submit to those who threaten humanity.” The audio cut out and the siren continued._

_“Come on Katie, let’s do this!” Laura ran off towards her skell, an Inferno model. Kate fallowed after her, boarding her Lilah model._

_**Systems online. No external or internal damage sustained. Fuel is at maximum capacity.** The internal computer of the skell confirmed that everything was well “You ready Laura? It’s now or never.”_

_“Hell yeah I am. Let’s see how well you do out there though.” The skell her sister was piloting, as well as the twenty or so other skells in that hanger, fell out of the whale as the hatch in that hanger released. Not long after the drop, Kate activated the propulsion system at the upper back of her skell. A brilliant blue light came out of them, and Kate went straight to fighting the xenoforms. The blitz was fast and powerful, ripping apart some skells in only an instant._

_A jostle set Kate’s gyroscopic balance off. **External damage sustained. Left thruster has been compromised.** Kate frantically tried to maintain her skell’s functionality, but another shot rendered the right arm useless. The gravity of the nearby planet proved too much, and it drew her in with frightening speed. As she was coming down with the rest of the ship, she saw one skell with blinding power and speed taking down the xenos left and right, as if they were simple sheep for the slaughter._

_The crash was a powerful one. Almost all systems within her skell were trashed, as well as most her emergency first aid equipment. The only major damage she sustained was a gash in her leg from shrapnel, which she took care of rather with some gauze. She popped open her cockpit, and took a look out onto the land that it looked like she was stuck on. The fires and pieces from the now wrecked White Whale was unable to remove the beauty of this planet. A sprawling grassy field with large mountains in some areas was what she saw. Many life forms, supposedly indigenous ones, showed signs of panic, and a giant quadruped behemoth, was stopping around crushing anything under its giant weight. Its feet were closing in on Kate and her skell, before Laura came by her side._

_“You are NOT hurting my family you beast!” She pulled a giant weapon off both her skell’s shoulders and combined the parts, a massive weapon and probably one of the weapons in development from the R &D team. Even on the Whale they never stopped developing new weapons to fight the possible xenoform threat. “MEGAFLAME BULLET!!” A massive shot of fire blasted from the business end of the weapon, and lodged itself into the beast’s leg. It staggered a bit, but was still alive and defending itself. “Alright, let’s give it another go!” Another shot hurled from the weapon, but this time lodged itself in the base of the neck, ripping it clean off as it passed through with a sickening sound. Only a small amount of the beast’s blue blood shot out of the neck and body, but not much as most of it got cauterized from the heat of the weapon. The neck fell from the ground, yet a face was under where it broke off. Scorch marks ran under the right eye, and it let off a mighty roar as its eyes got a look of death upon them. “Alright than, time to hit them where it counts!” Laura fired off five consecutive rounds off her weapon into the beast’s face. The metal on the right arm of her skell was getting red hot, as was the weapon. The final shot she let off finally did the weapon in, and it exploded. Along with the weapon itself, Laura’s skell’s right arm went out with it. Shrapnel was blasted off in all directions, at intense speed. Many pieces of shrapnel flew into the cockpit. A cry of pain emanated from Laura’s skell._

_“Sister!” Kate ran towards the skell and opened the cockpit with the emergency release from her com device. The bluish purple biocirculitory plasma used in the mimiosomes dripped from Laura, and pooled at the base of the cockpit and back of the no longer properly suspended seat. The shrapnel had embedded itself into Laura’s chest and entire right side. Kate shut off the nervous circuits to ease Laura’s pain, and she grabbed the medical kit that was embedded with shrapnel. She ripped the piece out and looked at what she could use. The bandages, gauze, antiseptic packages, and adhesive tape could still be used. However, the package of biocirculitory plasma had been stabbed by the shrapnel and was unable to be used for a transfer. Frantically, Kate took out the gauze, tape, and knife at her waist to patch up as much of her sister as possible._

_“It’s… not enough Kate. Without the transfer, I don’t have enough to stay alive for long. Just… show me as much of this world as you can. Please.” Laura rasped out the words._

_“Of course.” Kate’s voice was unsteady. Tears flowed from her eyes as she picked up her sister and carried her away from the wreckage. A good amount of the fires had started to die out, and sun had started to rise over the land of this planet. As soon as it did, Kate had gotten to the head of the nearby waterfall that she crashed by. They were able to see the habitat unit that had taken a somewhat smooth landing next to the sea thanks to the crew in charge of it. Rubble and remnants of the ship were scattered all around the plains that was this new land. The nearby flora was blowing in the slight breeze that had picked up. Many of the species of fauna had started to awaken from slumber and started to roam the plains for a good meal._

_“This world is beautiful. Please Kate, protect this world, and protect humanity. Besides, I won’t be gone forever; you can revive me at the core when we find it. Aoi said the barrier around it was neigh indestructible after all. I’ll see you than.” The eyes of the mimeosome went dark and the biocirculatitory plasma leaking from the wound stopped saturating the gauze on her right side. Kate gave her sister one last hug, and brought her mim to NLA after setting up a makeshift grave._

They sat in silence for a bit as Kate clutched the locket. “To be honest, that’s part of the reason I even joined BLADE in the first place, to help find the core and see my sister and daughter again.” 

____________“That’s quite the valiant reason. They must mean everything to you if that’s why you joined.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“They did, but now I have more to fight for. Elma, Lin, Mia, everyone in NLA.” Kate looked down and her cheeks got a bit of a reddish hue on them. “Especially you.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Hey, want to get some lunch? My treat.” Hope stood up and gave Kate her hand._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Kate smiled and grabbed her hand. “Sure.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________The got into their skells and drove off towards NLA._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you guys think! Btw, sorry for taking so long to post the second half.


End file.
